The present invention relates to a method for handling information in a calendar system, and particularly to a method for handling meeting invitations and a calendar system.
In the business field, organizing and participating in meetings is common. A calendar system, which is usually used with emails, provides a convenient mechanism for the organization and arrangement of a meeting. If there are many variations in meeting arrangements or activities in the workplace, one may worry about conflicts among meeting arrangements or forgetting one of them, he can use a calendar system to arrange and remember them. In a calendar system, it is possible to display arrangements for activities, such as meetings, in order of time, and remind the user of participating at a specified time.
Calendar systems provide mechanisms for viewing, setting, and modifying meeting arrangements. For example, the manner of viewing meeting arrangements is very flexible. The meeting arrangements in a calendar system can be viewed by “day”, “workweek”, or month. If one wants to check meetings or activities in some time period, he only needs to select the corresponding date in the “calendar” navigation pane, and then the corresponding calendar will be displayed in the window, in which labels with different colors may be used to indicate the nature and importance of the meeting or activity. In the calendar system, a user can also input and view details of some activities, or search the calendar for an activity such as a meeting with a “find” function.
The calendar system also provides the function of inviting participants of a meeting by determining the “start time” and “end time” of a meeting and inviting others to participating in it. In the calendar system, one can click a “recipient” button to open a dialog, in which contacts in an address book can be searched for, or in which their email addresses can be input directly. When finished, the meeting invitation can be sent to the specified recipients. Also, a meeting reminder can be set in the calendar system, in order to remind the user of activities about to occur in specified times.
A meeting arrangement already placed in the calendar system can also be modified, and the modified update information can be sent to the meeting participants. The modification can be changes in the meeting time, content, location, or participants. If only the time or date of the meeting arrangement needs to be modified, the following method can generally be used: displaying in the window the label of time to be modified; and directing the cursor to the label for setting time or date; then the label can be moved up, down, left, or right. Moving the cursor up or down advances or postpones the start time of the meeting, respectively. For the date, moving the cursor left or right advances or postpones the start time of the meeting one day or several days, respectively. A meeting arrangement already placed in the calendar system can also be deleted.
Therefore, although existing calendar systems provide conveniences, there are still deficiencies to be improved in how to efficiently handle meeting arrangements under complex circumstances.